I am at a complete loss for what to say about his music. So rather than try I made this mix.

Because I cross post all these mixes over on Mixcloud I am not able to make a mix with nothing but Johannsson music. Mixcloud has a policy of only 4 tracks from a single artist per mix. So I used 4 Johannsson cuts, some of my favs, and music from other artists that I have always grouped together with Johann.

I hope you will listen to this mix and also go seek out Johannsson's awesome library of music that is keeping his memory alive in this world.

I'm not sure where this mix originated. It may have started with Johann Johannsson's Kangaru from the Arrival soundtrack, God knows I listened to that a ton over the last 6 months. Maybe it was Max Richter.

Whatever it was I found myself collecting vocal tunes. The kind of tracks that have vocals but many times no words or lyrics. If there are words it's usually unintelligible or a language like Latin. Once I gathered enough music then wa-lah here's an ethereal vocal mix.

Two of my favorite albums this year are from Icelandic composers, Jóhann Jóhannsson - Orphée and Ólafur Arnalds - Islands. How does the tiny country of Iceland produce so many incredible artists? I don't know how but I'm happy every time new music comes from that mysterious place.

The moment I heard these two recordings I knew I'd have to make a new modern classical mix. All of the music here is fairly new and most of it has an accessible classical take with an ambient touch.

100% of the proceeds are donated to two charitable organizations, Doctors Without Borders and The Humane Society, to help all those affected by Hurricane Sandy. Please head over to Headphone Commute and think about picking up this excellent compilation.

I guess you could say that all the music I listen to is a soundtrack of one sort or another. Soundtrack for cleaning the house, soundtrack for sleeping, for biking, for reading, for living. Most of my mixes could be considered to be mini soundtracks.

So what makes this one different? I guess the tracks collected here just sort of had that "soundtrack" feel when I first heard them. I imagined a scene from a film with the tune as the soundtrack. The tracklist then becomes a set of "imaginary soundtracks."

Some of the cuts, such as those from Cliff Martinez & Clint Mansell, are from actual soundtracks. The others just seemed to fit the mood.

For some reason,when I think of falling snow, the instrument that comes to mind is the piano. Maybe it's from years of listening to Vince Guaraldi's Charlie Brown Christmas album. So it's no surprise that there is a fair amount of piano music in this "snow" mix.

We didn't have any snow yet but I had been thinking about doing a "first snow" mix for awhile & decided to throw one together Friday night. Then I woke up Saturday morning to a light dusting of snow on the ground. Maybe next I should do a mix for winning the lottery.

As I said there is a lot of piano music in here. Led by Nils Frahm, from his excellent Felt album. A release that will end up on my best of the year list & one which everyone needs to hear. I think this mix works well as an early season "snow" mix versus the more bleak mid winter drones that will show up later.

I expect to crank out at least one more mix before the end of the year. Plus I'll have a year-end top 20 list, so start thinking of your own lists if you'd like to contribute.

On the heals of the last mix, which was sort of modern classical, comes another neo-classical type mix.

I started collecting tunes for this mix after I heard Alva Noto's "Argonaut Version" in a Quiet Sounds mix. I like that song & wanted it to find a home in a mix.

Speaking of Quiet Sounds, there are some excellent mixes available for download there. I wish Brian would crank them out more often.

I stole the title for this mix from a song by The Tumbled Sea, which is next to last in the mix. It just sounded like a good title & it fit with the crappy weather we've been having here.

The mix ends with a sort syrupy tune from Anthony Phillips. It may be a bit too sweet but it's one of those tunes that I have always liked, goes back to college days. i don't know if I was hearing it for the first time now, whether I would like it as much. I'm sure a big part of the song's attraction is it's nostalgic significance. Anthony Phillips is the original guitarist for Genesis and back in high school & college I was a HUGE Genesis fan. Actually I still am, but that was how I came to Phillips' music back then. It was nice to sneak that track into a mix.

I love soundtracks. And if you look at the tracklist for this mix, you'll see that I have a few favorite composers.

At the top of that list are Clint Mansell & Cliff Martinez. They are responsible for two of my favorite soundtracks, The Fountain & Solaris.

Jon Hopkins, a new composer on the soundtrack scene, could soon join those two as a favorite. His soundtrack for the movie Monsters, got a lot of play here. I ended up using three tracks from that album in this mix, I just couldn't resist.

Actually I doubled up a few artists in this mix, Martinez, Hopkins, Sigur Ros, Nick & Warren Ellis, Underworld. Normally I don't like to do that but it just sort of happened that way. This is a relatively short mix but I think it works. Sometimes I don't make it to the end of some mixes, this way hopefully listeners are still in to it & focused at the end.

I am very excited to present this next mix. It's a guest mix by longtime listener/downloader, Ron Sylvester.

Ron was the inspiration for a couple of my mixes that used old 78rpm recordings as a basis for the mixes "Sustain & Decay" and "Revenants of the Past". Ron sent me some mix cd's which I really enjoyed & I told him he really should do a proper mix someday.

Well I am delighted that Ron has allowed me to present his first mix here for everyone to enjoy. I'll let Ron describe the mix...

"A week or so ago I stumbled upon the album Salicornie Areavirus by Enrico Coniglio; his website says the album is meant to be a sort of ‘collection of "sound tales" dedicated to Venice’. I thought I recognized his name from somewhere, and back-tracked it to a Lost Children netlabel release featuring Italian artists entitled Underwater Noises, which had been curated by Coniglio. Two other Lost Children Releases featuring Italian artists, Con Fuoco d'Occhi un Nostalgico Lupo volumes I and II, gave me most of what I needed to complete the mix. I finished it off with work by Ulises Conti, Lodovico Einaudi, Paolo Fresu, a Sub Rosa compilation of ritual music entitled Illuminated, and a handful of ambience from Soundtransit and the storehouse of opera 78s at archive.org.

Anyhow, for me this mix is simply entitled Venice, though the musicians are not necessarily from Venice, nor are the field recordings strictly from Venice. Apart from Nguen Le, who is playing with Paolo Fresu (who is Sardinian), I think all the artists or field recording locales are at least Italian. Actually, now that I think of it, the recordings from Illuminated are not necessarily Italian. Catholic, though; that’s something. At any rate, and as usual, the mix is more about a sort of Venetian feeling: canals, Carnevale, the Grand Lagoon, a certain slow sinking. I’ve never been to Venice, though, so what do I know about it?

I was really taken by Enrico Coniglio’s album and it sort of got this mix started. Here’s his website, but as in all things ambient, you are probably way ahead of me on this:

This last mix of 2010 is a mix that I did for Headphone Commute about 3 months ago. They were kind enough to ask for a mix & I was honored to add it to their great collection of mixes they post at their own site & at their Mixcloud site.

I realized that if I was going to post this piano mix I'd better do it now because the title is "pno 2010" so I need to squeeze it into 2010 before it's gone.

This mix starts with John Cage – “On a Landscape”, which is appropriate, because that tune is the reason I did this piano mix. I’d never heard “In a Landscape” when a friend linked to it on youtube. What a great piece of music. So I decided to build a piano mix with that as the jumping off point.

The other unusual piece in this mix is Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guébrou – “Golgotha” by an Ethiopian nun living in Jerusalem. Her music is unique, it filters the traditional Ethiopian pentatonic scale through classical technique– in the end sounding like impressionistic jazz. Wonderful music.